The questionnaire revealed differences in the use of cloud storage ser-vices between different user groups, with students and academic staff favouring them much more than IT staff.

People using Dropbox for university data

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Students

researchers and lectures

IT services

University administration

More than 175 million users worldwide use the cloud storage service provided by the US-

based company Dropbox. It allows easy synchronisation of files with desktop com-puters and smart devices. Sharing files with others is very simple, too. Up to a limit of a few gigabytes, the service is free. The service also has a large user base in the Swiss academic community. People use it for data in the higher education context, which can be confidential or protected by copyright, and university management and IT departments do not feel at ease with this. They regard it as problematic because of the legal and privacy issues. Of course, they have always offered users storage space on their university infrastructure, but usage patterns have changed, and users now prefer cloud services, Dropbox being the most popular among them.

Reaching out for the community

What can be done about this problem? Simply admonishing and educating users about privacy and legal concerns does not help to improve the situation. Providing a safe and secure alternative to synchronise and share files is the smarter way. With this in mind, university IT departments asked SWITCH to take up this idea in its inno-vation process. Following the innovation process, SWITCH specified the require-ments for a Dropbox-like service together with the IT departments. The main require-ments are as follows:

Swiss cloud storage for universitiesSWITCH ist going to offer a secure and reliable cloud storage service with Dropbox-like functionalities.

Text: Patrik Schnellmann

Compliance with Swiss data protection law and Swiss data location

Availability on desktop and mobile op-erating systems

Support of AAI for authentication No charging of end users High usability

The first four requirements are easy to evaluate. When it comes to usability, meanwhile, who can tell better than the users themselves? SWITCH built up a test infrastructure with two Dropbox-like so-lutions. In the community, we recruited over 500 users to evaluate those solutions and provide feedback. After the end of the test phase, users were asked to answer a questionnaire. The results provided valua-ble insight into the use of cloud-based shared storage solutions and the position of the tested products compared with popular rival products.

As mentioned above, Dropbox is the most popular solution, with 73 per cent of the respondents having used it within the last year. They use it for private data as well as for university data. Of these, 55 per cent store university data on Dropbox. The fact that Dropbox sets the standards is also re-flected in the comparison between Drop-box and the tested products: on average, it is rated better by 65 per cent of the re-spondents. On the other hand, the signs for a successful service from SWITCH are quite positive: more than 80 per cent of the respondents would use a Dropbox-like ser-vice with 10 GB of free storage space. It

goes without saying that requirements in the academic world can easily exceed 10 GB and go up to 100 GB or even more, especial-ly for researchers.

Safe storage by SWITCH

What is SWITCH’s conclusion after the test phase and this feedback from the com-munity? The positive response is encour-aging. SWITCH therefore envisages devel-oping a Dropbox-like service that will enable collaboration by allowing users to share their files within the community. Us-ers will be able to access their files via their desktop computers, smartphones and tab-lets. The service will run on a scalable cloud infrastructure in Switzerland managed by SWITCH. Users benefit from a service that features reliability, privacy security.

SWITCH Innovation Engine: www.switch.ch/innovation/engine/

Patrik SchnellmannHe is responsible for Business Develop-ment at SWITCH. He holds an MSc in Computer Science and MAS ETH MTEC. Before Patrik

Schnellmann joined SWITCH in 2004, he ac-quired experiences in the finance industry and the Swiss Government.patrik.schnellmann@switch.ch

55 per cent of the questionnaire respondents use Dropbox for data in the university context.

Purpose of Dropbox use

6%

19%

26%

49%

Private use

University use

Private and university use

not used

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